Saturday, March 14, 2015

Fifty Shades Of Red (Rock Canyon)

When you are in the company of 130 amazing photographers there are many reasons to head to Las Vegas. The first is that the city has an incredible amount of interesting things to act as lens fodder for your camera.

However, for a guy like me, urban terrain, even one that is basically one giant neon sign, can get a bit dull. This brings us to the second reason to head to Las Vegas: It is surrounded by amazing and beautiful nature.

It is for this reason that I was completely chuffed to learn that a whole lot of nature was on the schedule for The Great Scavenger Hunt Meet Up, that I had the pleasure of experiencing last weekend.

Day one, just after lunch, we all piled into a bus, and drove 20 minutes out of town to the picturesque Red Rock Canyon.

We were not alone in the park, of course. It was actually quite busy. The extra human elements do lend itself to some interesting additions to what is otherwise barren desert scenery.

The scenery was impressive. The different colours on the rocks is stunning at times. Lots of shades of reds and whites.

We were driving along a 13 mile scenic route. So far each stop was bringing us close to large rock walls. After we drove about half-way round, and we had several stops of these dominating rock walls, the view of the valley floor was absolutely stunning.

At this same stop a couple of the Scavengers launched a quadcopter drone.

The massive expanse of the place is hard to put into a single picture. This shot sums it up nicely tho - compare the size of the pickup truck in the foreground to the cars on the road in the background.

Surprising to me, the desert terrain actually hosted quite a few large trees.

One last view of the canyon, and we turned the bus back towards town.

Now, frequent readers of this blog may be asking themselves: "Surely Dave didn't go all that way across the country, immerse himself in such stunning scenery, and not do any geocaching. Where is the caching story we've come to know and love?"

First of all, thanks for loving my caching stories (see what I did there?), and don't worry. I did go caching in Red Rock Canyon, but that is a story that will have to wait until next time.